Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and ledthem up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transﬁguredbefore them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one onearth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses,who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, ʻRabbi, it is good forus to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, andone for Elijah.ʼ He did not know what to say, for they were terriﬁed. Then acloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ʻThis ismy Son, the Beloved; listen to him!ʼ Suddenly when they looked around,they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no oneabout what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from thedead.

In her book Emily of the New Moon, L. M. Montgomery writes:

It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside -- but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind ﬂuttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond -- only a glimpse -- and heard a note of unearthly music.... And always when the ﬂash came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty.

I have a question for us to ponder this morning: “Where have youexperienced the divine mystery in your personal - or, in our communal lifetogether?” To put it another way: think about an experience you’ve had, ofwhatever sort, that brought you somehow into the presence of God - whenthat thin curtain was parted momentarily and you glimpsed somethingbeautiful, enchanting, sacred, beyond. Does this trigger any memories?

Kimberly Conway Ireton, in an article entitled “Waking to Mystery,” writes ofone such experience. She was suffering from postpartum depression, livingwith a constant sense of fear, anxiety and sadness.

In the midst of that time, which I mostly remember as if it were shrouded in thick, dark clouds, I can recall one moment when those clouds parted and I was able to see a reality beyond the one in which I was trapped. It happened, of all places, in the kitchen. I was washing a bunch of Swiss chard in the sink when suddenly I became aware of how beautiful it was -- the crinkly dark green leaves with their bright red veins, the thick yet silky texture of the leaf as I gently pulled apart each fold to wash inside it, the way the leaves glistened in the sunlight slanting through the kitchen window as I lifted each washed leaf out of the water and placed it on the towel beside the sink. Time seemed to stop -- or at least cease to matter -- as I wondered at the beauty of the chard.

The veil had lifted momentarily and she was ﬁlled with a sense of awe andtimelessness and holiness. It was a moment of grace. It happened amongthe countless commonplace routines of everyday living.

The veil had lifted and the everyday world was transﬁgured. She glimpsedthe beauty and mystery at the heart of all that is, seeing an ordinary pieceof chard that she had washed many times before, as it really is, not as itusually appeared.

The veil had lifted and she was transﬁgured - momentarily. God ministeredto her in her dark hour. Her depression wasnʼt instantaneously lifted for alltime, but in this revelation of beauty, this moment of mystery gave her hope-- that there is more to life than usually meets the eye. This mystery is atthe very heart of our faith.

The word “heart” appears in the Bible over 1,000 times. Unlike the meaning associated with Valentines and romantic love, “heart” in the Biblical sense has a much more comprehensive meaning. It is a metaphor for the inner self as a whole, at itʼs deepest spiritual level. It reﬂects on our human condition: are our hearts “open” - turned towards God? -- or “closed” - turned away from God?

How do our hearts become open? The Bible tells us that the Spirit of Goddoes it. Did Kimberly consciously decide to open her heart to God whilewashing the chard? Far from it. God came to her. Celtic Christianity, whichoriginated on the British isles, would tell you that the Spirit of God operates through “thin places.”

Thomas Merton, a twentieth-century Trappist monk expresses it thisway. I’ve printed it on the cover of your bulletins. Let’s read it together:

Life is simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget about ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. Itʼs impossible. The only thing is that we donʼt see it.

But then there are those times when we do. A minister friend described to me a time when he was in college in the 60ʼs living the life of drink,drugs and rock and roll. His life to that point had been pretty rough. Hedecided to try transcendental meditation. The ﬁrst time he sat down tomeditate, the world as he knew it, just dissolved and he was brought into aperfect state of peace and harmony, probably for the ﬁrst time in his life. Heknew then and there that there was something beyond what he knew in hisdaily life. It took many more years for him to give up his life style, but thisexperience had an enormous impact.

Itʼs in those thin places that the two levels of reality intersect. Theboundaries between them become very soft, porous, permeable. It is wherethat thin veil momentarily parts, our hearts are opened, and we beholdGod.

Where do we ﬁnd those thin places? Kimberly Ireton will tell you “it is in theeveryday, the commonplace that mystery most often unfolds.” For many ofus, it happens in nature. For others, in meditation.

Thin places also happen, not only in times of joy, but in times of illness,suffering and grief. I will never forget listening from the doorway of a dyingmanʼs hospital room, to the rosary being prayed in Spanish by 20 of hisrelatives, gathered around his bed, as he laid there bathed in tears. Those times can be the most sacred.

The central purpose of our spiritual practices, both personal andcommunal, is to become a thin place where our hearts are opened. This isone of the primary purposes of worship. Here we are attempting to create asense of the sacred. We cannot force or manufacture an experience of thedivine. It often comes when we least expect it. But through music, ritual, thesacraments, prayers, sermons, scripture, we create experiences that drawus out of ourselves and redirect us towards God.

It doesnʼt happen for everyone, every time. But I see glimpses of it when Iwatch one of you in the pews singing a hymn with a huge smile on yourface, or greeting a newly baptized member with a rose petal and a hug -when I watch the tears ﬂow after one of us has shared a personal andmoving story.

In the scripture reading this morning, a thin place was found on a mountaintop where a dramatic worship experience is related. In the Biblical tradition,from Moses on, mountaintops were those places that you climb to getcloser to God. Then the proverbial question arises: Did this really happen?

John Shelby Spong would tell you that this gospel is less biographyor history and more a misrashic retelling of the Jesus story based on theHebrew scriptures and organized around the liturgical year of the Jews.

He sees this story of the Transﬁguration as a retelling of the storyassociated with the Feast of Dedication or Hanukkah. After the fall of theTemple in 70 CE, when this gospel was written (remember that the Templewas where the Jews believed God resided), Christians portrayed Jesus asthe new temple, his body embraced by the heavenly light. In their traditionGodʼs holy light had always connected the people of Israel to Godʼspresence.

This story is ﬁlled with Jewish images of the past:

Moses went up the sacred mountain with three disciples - entered a cloudof God - and returned with the skin of his face radiantly shinning. In somecircles Moses was believed not to have died at all. God took him directlyinto the divine presence.

Elijah departed from this world in a ﬁery chariot drawn by ﬁery horsescoming out of heaven to take him directly into Godʼs presence.

And here we have Jesus up on that mountain, conversing with these tworepresentatives of the law and the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. Hisclothes a dazzling white. The torch is being passed. God speaks throughthe cloud, “Listen to him.” This sounds like a dramatic retelling of someearlier stories to me.

Jesus was one of those thin places. Thatʼs how he was perceived by hisfollowers.

And here we have a story that expresses their experience - their devotion.On this magical mountain of transﬁguration, the veil between the past andpresent and future, the curtain separating the human from the divine, waslifted and for a shining instant, the disciples were given a dazzling vision ofwho Jesus was - who he really was. It doesnʼt really matter if it happened injust this way. What matters is that it happened.

Peter wanted to hold on to that moment, bottle it up and keep it. But wecanʼt do that. Weʼre only given glimpses, and then itʼs back down themountain to our daily grind. But, as Kimberly found out, those moments canmake a difference.

Kathryn Spink, from the Taize community calls the Transﬁguration:

“a celebration of that presence of Christ which takes charge of everything in us and transﬁgures even that which disturbs us about ourselves. God penetrates those hardened, incredulous, even disquieting regions within us, about which we really do not know what to do. God penetrates them with the life of the Spirit and acts upon those regions and gives them Godʼs own face.”

The minister I was talking to, in that dark time of his life, describes seeingGodʼs face during his meditation. It wasnʼt a physical face, but a presence,that brought him peace and joy and ﬁlled him with love. Ah, that we couldeach experience such a transﬁguration.

Leave a Reply.

Eliot Church of Newton, UCC

The Eliot Church of Newton is an Open and Affirming congregation in the United Church of Christ (UCC). We affirm that all people are children of God. We honor and welcome everyone, and we are committed to being a uniting church that embraces the rich diversity of God's creation.